There will be people like Matt Gaetz who offer them their unpalatable racist/sexist/conspiratorial bullshit with a side of conspiracies about the wealthy, and a heaping serving of socialism.
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I did say years ago that Trump would have crushed in 2020 if he did a little bit of this. The slogan would have been right there: âBuild the Wall and Medicare for Allâ
But back to things that are actually happening: Is there even one person at any level of government that fits this profile right now?
Maybe if youâre looking at a 40 year time scale we get there, but basically anything is possible with that long of a window.
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Could take 40 years, could take 4, or the ruling class could course correct and avoid it. But I think itâs one of those things that will look 40 years away, then suddenly itâll happen within a year or two and people will be shocked. Once the tipping point is crossed, itâs going to move fast.
Never forget what they took away from us
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The 30 years war killed 5-8 million people. The population was roughly 80 million at the time. The equivalent is closer to 20-30 million dead.
Considering that it was mostly young men who died instead of plowing the fields. The effect was absolutely devastating on society.
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Yeah this is why Iâm always a bit skeptical of ânothing this big has ever happened this is totally newâ claims. History is full of insane stuff that was absolutely game changing. If you go back and look at the state of play, from the ground level normal people perspective, at any given time/place in history a lot of stuff looked impossible to change. And a lot of times it didnât change for a long long long timeâŚ
But who here thinks the internet is slowing down the pace of social change?
The truth is that since the beginning of the ârennaisanceâ period in Europe, really whenever the scientific method gained widespread traction, things have been changing very quickly. In fact the only really consistent through line to the whole thing is the people trying to stand atop the world shouting stop getting absolutely steamrolled over and over and over again⌠and much older social orders that were much more entrenched than the ones we have now getting savagely uprooted by technology and economics.
I hope everyone realizes that I donât think what comes next is some kind of utopia. I donât even think it will be better than the current era necessarily (although how good/bad things are for normal people is definitely cyclical)⌠but I do think it will change into something different.
This current stalled out political meta really started in 2008 if youâre a Democrat or if youâre a Republican looking for a grievance you say it started with the Dems blocking Bork.
i think distillation goes back to at least ancient greece, at least thatâs what the internet tells me. although it is worth saying that methods had to be improved considerably before it could provide high enough quantities for widespread alcoholism
if real:I donât know who Andy Kim or Tammy Murphy are, but good. Good.
Andy Kim is a NJ rep in congress. Heâs the one that stayed late at the capitol after the insurrection to help clean up debris. His politics are mostly good, and he seems like a good dude. Hope he cruises to the Senate seat.
Tammy Murphy is the Governors wife. No clue about her politics but fuck nepotism and family dynasties.
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Me either, but from her Wikipedia she sounds awful:
Murphy grew up a Republican. She made donations to Republican candidates, including George W. Bush and the New Jersey Republican Party.[2] She changed political party in the mid-2000s based on her stances on issues such as abortion, gun control, and the environment.
Combine that with being a former banker at Goldman Sachs and itâs clear that economically she had no problem with Republicans.
Putting this in this thread because democrats will of course fail to properly push this agenda.
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I havenât listened, but Chris Hayesâ latest podcast episode is on this subject:
Unfortunately this feels like something that is extremely difficult to get public support behind, and extremely vulnerable to reactionary anger:
There are a number of barriers that have impeded the broad implementation of this type of assistance, which include the lack of policymaker support and public mistrust in homeless peopleâs ability to manage money. Our guest this week found that direct cash transfers actually result in net societal savings over time.
âActually it saves money in the long runâ is unfortunately not a convincing argument to most of society, measured against the anger of âbut but what if someone uses drugs and we give them money and they spend it on drugsâ.
Yeah the entire reason itâs Universal Basic Income is to hack around this problem. Itâs pretty hard to get angry someone else is getting the exact same thing you are.
Means testing and conditional money are both straight up evil and there are basically no situations where itâs not hugely counterproductive.
If you see poor people, especially poor people who have never in their lives had an opportunity to be anything but poor, you are not seeing morons who do not know what is good for them. They are probably at least as good at being poor as you are at being middle class lol. Being poor is actually quite a bit harder trust me.
I borrowed ~6k from the older generation of my family to move for the first freight brokerage job. If they hadnât lent/given me that money I probably wouldnât be in the insanely privileged situation Iâm in. I went from poor to upper middle class on a 6k cash injection at the right time. The fucking dentists could have sent me the money and generated a positive return on it.
My point is that there are probably a LOT of people in the US who if you gave them 10k worth of breathing room would jump 4 tax brackets. Iâm sure there are also a lot of people who would use it to take a long vacation and recover from the damn near terminal burnout theyâve been working their way to committing suicide over.
My biggest issues with out countries system donât stem from the outrageous wealth of the people at the top of the pyramid. My biggest issues stem from the fact that most people spend a good sized chunk of their lives doing stuff they donât like out of fear of being annihilated lol. I realize the stuff people donât like doing will still need to get done, I just want the people doing it to have a different motivation like I donât know, a bunch of surplus money to buy luxuries and experience income inequality with the neighbors because dadâs the best septic tank guy in the county and momâs a nurse and they fucking deserve it.
Basically the floor needs to raise kind of a lot. Like a living wage in this country is 70k so UBI should be 35k. At least half that much for every kid goes to the parents. How to pay for it? You put anti snowball mechanics into the tax code and use the proceeds to pay the people at the bottom.
Actually fine getting rid of the minimum wage in this scenario. Mostly because it would be redundant. Thereâs going to be plenty of demand for labor and labor will have an excellent bargaining position.
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Iâve run into a number of younger people who make something like 30-40k/yr who reliably vote blue and but hate this type of policy because they are busting their ass for not that much more (theyâre probably comparing take home pay rather than gross income). Seems unfair to them. And these are Trump hating, pro-choice, LGBTQ-friendly twentysomethings.
Thatâs exactly why you do this:
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Yeah, but itâs just the equivalent of the stimulus money, but we do it every month, for everyone, always. Although weâd probably need to do something else (like raise taxes on the rich by a lot) to not have a ton of inflation.
Wouldnât their income nearly double with a UBI, then? Seems great for them.
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